Dream Baby Dream

DENVER, Colo. — Inside the Pepsi Center. Christy Hardin Smith to the right of me. David Neiwart, in an old-school Ramones shirt, lurking about. Lindsay Beyerstein on the floor. Behind me: TPM‘s David Kurtz and Ben Craw, who we ran into on our misguided efforts to drift toward the floor. I get up for one second and Jack & Jill Politics‘ Baratunde Thurston takes my seat on the couch. "Hey Attackerman, who ya attacking today?" he asked earlier. It tolls for thee, Thurston.

So: Teddy. Liveblogged it for the Streak, but now that I have a moment, let’s reflect for a second. Is there anyone in the second half of the 20th century who, more than Ted Kennedy, dedicated his or her life to liberalism? In its struggles, its failures, its excesses, its rebirths, there he was. His brothers made their family a symbol. But it was his charge, a task he never sought but bore for his entire adult life, to translate the symbol into tangible reality. Looking at Ted Kennedy tell us, in probably his last true star turn, that in Barack Obama "the dream lives on" — a reprise, of course, of his legendary "The Dream Will Never Die" speech 28 years ago — you wonder: Ted Kennedy devoted his life to pulling his fellow Americans out of poverty, division and injustice and into the sterling dignity of the American promise. What kind of person could oppose that mission?